Mobile computing devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless communication devices, global positioning devices, and the like, are increasingly requiring advanced two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) graphics applications. For example, the mobile computing devices increasingly offer games, character animations, graphical menu systems, and other applications that require advanced graphics rendering. This advanced graphics rendering, especially with 3D graphics, involves a substantial amount of data processing. Furthermore, these processing requirements only increase as the mobile computing devices adopt display panels that offer increased resolution and color depth.
One fundamental operation of a 3D graphics application is triangular rendering. In particular, a 3D graphical object is typically defined by a set of triangles in a 3D space. Each triangle is defined by three vertices within the 3D space and associated attributes of each vertex, including color attributes, texture coordinates, or both. Each triangle is graphically rendered using an interpolation process that fills the interior of the triangle based on the location and attribute information defined at the three vertices. More specifically, each starting and ending coordinate is computed for each line of pixels within the triangle using the interpolation process. The pixels along each line are sequentially filled to render the entire triangle.
One challenge for mobile computing devices, however, is the typical limitation of available power. Unlike a desktop computing environment, mobile computing devices typically have limited battery power. As a result, the computationally intensive interpolation process required for triangular rendering may place a significant strain on the available power of the mobile computing device.